Dear Editor,
It is an unfortunate ecological accident of history that modern day people in western civilisation think industrially rather than ecologically. People in our day tend to kill ‘weeds’ that nature sends to us as ‘FREE’ medication for depleted soils. Soils that we as modern day people remove all life from, chemically and physically. People also tend to consider that making dams to hold water that we can all ‘SEE’ as surface storage, makes more available water at their own cost, locally. Even the simplest experiment can demonstrate that; where water is measured coming into a dam, at any scale, the litres of water are always greater than litres of water measured over the spillway, out of a dam. Evaporation and leaching results in up to ninety per cent water loss from any surface storage of water — that is not densely vegetated (or covered as a house tank). Transpiration being less than evaporation, and growing vegetation brings in MORE atmospheric moisture and stores it locally. The less vegetation growing all the year through over whole landscapes, the MORE intense and longer the droughts that occur. By insuring that all living, dead and decaying species (Multiples of plants and animals species living and dying) are used as nature intends, to improve soil, the MORE water is stored in soil and MORE water is infiltrated and retained as in-ground water, over time. In-ground water is ‘away from evaporation’ and available to plant roots and water then seeps slowly into streams, rivers and pools. The main reason any continent loses soil and water as erosion is the export of natural resources by any means. By sheet and gulley erosion, by smoke or by boat — all of which is EROSION OF OUR NATURAL RESOURCES. Our present day civilisation in Australia is based upon the export of our natural resources; that is terminal.
Governments like to build dams and cities because people want MORE employment and MORE water and resources supplied to them and government can charge MORE for the supply of water and resources, (and tax employment), that once belonged to the natural ecosystem we live in, with our plants and animals as the whole biological community that all need food and water, for they are themselves ‘self-replacing’ food and water for all species present. It is also interesting that in America over the last few years, one hundred and forty dams the size of our Central West dams, that were built since the nineteen thirties, have been removed because the local people now realise than less available water is the only result of damming wild rivers and streams.
Up until the present era, civilisation based upon the building of vegetation bare cities and supply landscapes, have started where there were plenty of natural resources and collapsed when the resources were depleted.
So what will Australians do now in a more enlightened age?
Paul Newell